Seattle

The first thing I did in the Seattle area was go to lunch with a friend at Dixie's BBQ. Dixie's BBQ is an old auto garage that's been turned into a BBQ with some good grub.



They have a sauce simply called "The Man" that is only for people who like their food to hurt them.

The next day I rode around the area enjoying the nice weather and the good scenery.



It's...bigger out here. I was riding around for hours and haven't covered hardly any of the Olympic Peninsula.

Then I went on the Seattle Underworld Tour with another friend out here. I was told they change the script of the tour after 8pm. Before then it's a little candy coated and not as fun. The old city is actually under the current one. Since Seattle started out as a logging town, as it started to become a proper city, there were a lot of problems with the infrastructure. After the great fire of 1889 they raised the city up by as much as 36 feet in some places. But business owners downtown didn't want to wait for them to finish raising the streets, so they rebuilt their buildings at the original level. This leaves a whole underground portion where all SORTS of seedy stuff can go on. Interesting fact, during the gold rush 2,000 women claimed to be seamstresses but only a handful had sewing machines.

The next day I went to The Lunchbox Laboratory with yet another friend. This place is great. They specialize in burgers. Each week, some burgers are presented as weekly experiments, and the ones that really catch on get put on the regular menu. As a result, when you bite into your burger at Lunchbox Laboratory, you feel as if all you've experienced up until this point is a close approximation of what a burger should be. I've eaten at Wolfgang Puck's. I've eaten at Emeril's. I've grown up eating my mom's cooking which trumps them all anyway. I will put my own burgers up against any of theirs. Yet not even my own recipe could compete with this place.



Also, they serve drinks in beakers:



Aaaaand they have an arcade upstairs or at least, they will. I believe when I went it wasn't up and running yet.

After lunch, I went to the Pike Place Market which is a bustling little scene where you can get pretty much anything: Chocolate, pasta, chocolate pasta...the list goes on. It's where the original Starbucks is:



There are talented artists and buskers aplenty at the Pike Place Market. It's worth checking out but be prepared for a massive crowd.

I have no way of ending the blog this week with any degree of wit or eloquence, so:

The end.